Burnout, overwhelm, getting sick. All these things happen to the best of us when we are not listening to our bodies. Most executives put in a 10+ hour day, and in an office productivity study conducted by Microsoft last year (2005), respondents in the US said that they worked an average of 45 hours per week, only 29 of which are actually productive!
Even more disturbing, in a New Yorker article entitled No Work and No Play, we're told that "Americans trade their productivity for more money, while Europeans trade it for more leisure."
What a concept, we'd rather work than play. What is that doing to our collective nervous system? What is that doing to yours?
Let's talk about what would happen to your bottom line if you loosened the deathgrip you have on your life, your projects, your relationships...
Try this for a quick minute...clench the fist of your non-dominant hand (if you are right-handed, that would be your left hand) as tight as possible, hold it tight and try to write a few sentences on paper with your normal writing hand. You can do it, right? But it takes more concentration and energy, because the strain of holding on is draining to your energy. The effort it takes to hold on tight siphons off your capacity to focus on the task at hand. (no pun intended!) That's what over-control, lack of sleep, stress and resistance are doing to your life force every day.
I invite you to ask yourself where are the places in your life that you can release and let go. Are you micromanaging your staff? Your file drawer? Your pencils? Your kids? Your exercise regime? Consider the idea of what would actually happen if leisure and rest rose up the priority list. It turns out you would actually get more done in a day!
Special assignment: keep these words in your mind: gratitude, trust, surrender. (I'll get back to them later)
Now...relax the hand. How does that feel? Take a breath and picture your muscles all relaxing. Many of us confuse tenseness and adreneline rushing through our bodies with actual productivity, when nothing could be less true. When we are spending our energy on contraction, on the illusion of control, our productivity and creativity actually drop.
What does this mean in practical bottom-line terms? That taking a mental vacation several times a day is not a luxury, it is a necessity for us to get the most out of our time, whether we are working collaboratively or on our own.
My suggestion when taking a break is to step out of the warp and weft of your routine and even venture into the world of playful and silly. That's the model at Google, and by my calculations, they must be doing something right! (check out the interesting video to see the visionary model google is using for the workplace)
Wait a minute! 
Don't you have to get back to work?
Do you have to get back to work? When was the last time you scheduled and actually took a short break?
According to proposal expert Laura Ricci, in her workplace productivity blog Laura's Winning Ideas, relaxing and taking regular breaks is essential to keep your efficiency and productivity quotient up. You may have heard this many times before, but who has time to listen? Here's the science behind your mother telling you to take a nap when you are tired:
[excerpted]
Burnout is a biologic reality, not a psychological weakness.
The brain works by creating pathways for specific projects. Communication is passed between cells along these synaptic pathways by electrical charges. The gap between cells has a conducting property. Think of it as a gel that holds a charge, similar to a battery.
Synaptic pathways wear out
When the synaptic pathway is fired continuously, the gel loses its charge after awhile. Communication slows and takes on static. By the time you notice a slowdown, burnout has already occurred.
The gel will re-charge, but it takes a day or several, and the pathway must be closed to most traffic.
[Note: this reminds me of that cartoon in the movie 'What the Bleep' where they were talking about the way our brain synapses talk to each other. Check it out!]
An Ounce and 40 Minutes of Prevention
Breaks are the only way to prevent this problem from slowing down your progress.
Make sure [you] take breaks. Meal breaks should include REAL FOOD, not fast food and last at least 40 minutes each. Your body needs time to redistribute fluids back to the brain after getting your digestive track lubricated and working. A walk around the outside, a break for a snack of fresh fruit, a few minutes of music, a 20 minute nap.
ACTION NEEDED: Assign someone the responsibility to be the break police until you get this new habit established. Each person can be responsible for coming up with one surprise break activity each day/week: 20 jumping jacks, wrapping gifts, everyone singing a song together, etc. These short breaks help you re-charge, and may also convince the folks down the hall that proposal folks are a cult.
Ok, I don't know about singing songs together with your colleagues (one more time, "Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree ...") but a quick catnap at your desk, a brisk walk (I heard the rumor that Google has a lap pool for their employees!) or a snack break works wonders for the spirit.
Anne Fisher, columnist for Fortune senior writer, reported in CNNMoney.com that in the US, many people are working 50 hour weeks on 7 hours of sleep or less and that just doesn't make sense. Not only is their productivity impaired, but so is their creativity. We need time to flow, to slow down, to recharge in order to come up with all those great ideas. Here's what Anne says:
What scientists have only recently begun to realize is that people may do their best thinking when they are not concentrating on work at all. If you've ever had a great idea pop into your head while you were washing your car, walking your dog, or even napping, you already know what a team of Dutch psychologists revealed last month in the journal Science: The unconscious mind is a terrific solver of complex problems when the conscious mind is busy elsewhere or, perhaps better yet, not overtaxed at all.
So what do trust, gratitude and surrender have to do with workplace productivity? If you stop to think about it, control issues and micromanagement are really a sign of fear. Fear of lack, insecurity, mistrust. These are all emotions and perspectives that cause you to contract inside, much like your fist was when it was tightly clenched. Remember how counter-productive that turned out to be?
Consider the idea of pausing the next time you feel tight inside your chest and asking yourself if there is a way that you can let go...that you can get creative about different ways of solving the problem, that you can see the situation more expansively, from the viewpoint of trust, surrender and gratitude. It costs nothing to try it...and you have a lot at stake. I would love to hear your comments on what happened in the comment box below.
ok, I am giving you permission to every few hours, take a few minutes to goof off, take a shower, a walk, a nap, a snack break. Laugh out loud and then get back to work! Reality Check: there's no sense in overworking if it doesn't make you more productive.
Your nervous system will love you and so will your boss or clients.
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ Jessica -:¦:-
